Annotating Pvt. Oliver Miller's memorial roster entry

Back in 2011, I started assembling an annotated roster of young men from Lucas County who gave up their lives in service during the Civil War. There are 149 names on the roster, now complete or at least close to it. 

That's an astonishing number for a rather small Iowa county, more than the total of losses in all later wars.

But I've never quite finished off the annotations and return to work on that end of the project now and then. So yesterday, I added the information to the entry for Private Oliver B. Miller, 19 when he was killed in combat during the Battle of Shiloh on April 6, 1862.

The Iowa monument at Shiloh, tallest in the military park, is at left.

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MILLER, OLIVER B., age 19 at enlistment, of Whitebreast Township, private, Co. B, 6th Iowa Volunteer Infantry; enlisted 1 July 1861, mustered 17 July 1861; killed in action during the Battle of Shiloh 6 April 1862; buried among the unknowns Shiloh National Military Park.

Oliver, born ca. 1842 in Bartholomew County, Indiana, moved to Lucas County with his parents, John C. and Elizabeth (Edwards) Miller, in 1855, and settled on a farm near Chariton. Six years later, he was among the first young men from the county to volunteer for Civil War service --- on July 1, 1861. As such, he was assigned to what became Company B, 6th Iowa Volunteer Infantry.

That unit, commanded by Capt. Daniel Iseminger, marched out of Chariton, bound for Burlington, on July 8, 1861, after an elaborate leave-taking ceremony, and was mustered there on July 17.

Nine months later, on April 6-7, 1862, Company B was engaged in the great Tennessee battle near Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River that became known as Shiloh. Capt. Iseminger was fatally wounded on the morning of April 6 by a shell fragment that struck him in the abdomen. Other unit members killed outright in combat were Oliver, Monroe Hardin, William Sheets, Charles J. Cheeny (or Cheney), James H. Spurling, John M. Sayre and John W. Weaver. John W. Armstrong and Zara M. Lanning died of wounds soon after.

On the morning after the battle, surviving members of Company B returned to the battlefield and buried their comrades. After war's end, these remains were collected and reinterred in what now is Shiloh National Military Park. By that time, however, it was impossible to identify the dead and so all of these Lucas Countyans are are buried there as "unknowns."